A visibly shaken education director Chris Spence apologized again Wednesday night and said he hoped for forgiveness for having plagiarized parts of an opinion piece he wrote for the Toronto Star.

However, he did not offer to resign, saying instead “my fate really is in the hands of trustees and I have asked for the opportunity to discuss a process for consequences.”

Although some trustees have said privately they believe the director should resign over the scandal, board Chair Chris Bolton said they could not tackle that issue at Wednesday’s special meeting because of rules limiting discussion to the topic on which the meeting originally was called — the labour situation.

“We want to assure everyone and the public we take the situation very seriously and we want to address it in a timely fashion,” at a meeting whose time he expected to announce Thursday morning.

Some trustees quietly have begun to call for his resignation, calling it a blow the already beleaguered board will find hard to overcome. Other trustees said it would be precipitous to make any decision before investigating the incident through “due process.”

The board has been working to improve its public image after revelations over outrageous costs for routine maintenance and construction and just as the province is sending in a special assistance team of retired educators from York region to help it find ways to curb spending.

While Houshmand said he agrees it’s “not okay to plagiarize, everyone makes mistakes and he has done so much good for the 260,000 students in this board.”

Meanwhile, the professor who teaches the Ryerson ethics course that Chris Spence has vowed to take as part of his apology for committing plagiarism said if the head of the Toronto District School Board loses his job over the scandal it would be a “hell of a loss” for schools and the city at large, “but a wonderful lesson for students in the crusade for honesty in work.”

Lisa Taylor, a former lawyer and journalist, teaches the Ethics and Law in the Practice of Journalism course at Ryerson University in which Spence pledged to enrol as part of his emotional apology for having used unnamed sources without credit in an opinion piece he wrote about extracurriculars for the Saturday Star.

“As the parent of a student in the public school system, the loss of Chris Spence’s leadership and vision would be pretty lousy, but the silver lining would be if it helps a 17-year-old think twice before they’re tempted to take something from some obscure website,” said Taylor, who will teach the one-semester course next in September.

“It would send a powerful signal that this is simply not tolerable no matter who you are.”

When a reader alerted the Star to a number of passages that Spence had used without credit, Public Editor Kathy English investigated the allegations and contacted Spence, who acknowledged the material in question had been copied.

“I was careless and sloppy and rushed, and I should have given credit to some of the work that I used,” he told Star reporter Kristin Rushowy Tuesday night. “This is something that I’m very passionate about and that I’ve spoken about and written about, and again I apologize for exercising such poor judgment.”

Spence has built a high profile with students by frequent visits to schools and is affectionately known as “Dr. Spence” by many staff and students.

Jeffrey Dvorkin is the director of the journalism program at the University of Toronto’s Scarborough campus and he said today’s almost instant access to information is “the downside of our digital culture; everyone sees it as so accessible, but it’s also so transparent. And even in an opinion piece, there has to be accountability.”

Dvorkin praised the Star for reporting the plagiarism immediately.

The accusations also come amidst a heightened awareness of plagiarism in the media. In September, Globe columnist Margaret Wente was disciplined for not attributing material she used in her writing.

Last Saturday, the Star published an apology for unattributed passages in a business story that had been taken from an online Globe and Mail article.

No matter how easy it has become to cut and paste electronically from other sources, Taylor warned “Control C and V can be our best friend and our worst enemy because it’s so easy, but sloppiness and carelessness should not earn anyone a free pass — it’s sure no free pass for a student at the TDSB or at university.”

Bolton had told the Star Tuesday he appreciated how candid Spence has been “about the mistake” . . . as in all learning situations, we see this as a learning experience and we support him totally in his bid to make it right.”

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